Just then, the suite door opened, and a tall figure in a blue police uniform jingled his way into the reception area.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” he said.
The persistent fan turned and fled. If she’d been paying attention, she might have noticed that the uniform fit rather badly. Or wondered if many real police officers wore black leather Reeboks and hung PEZ dispensers from their belts in addition to handcuffs and nightsticks.
“Ma’am? Ma’am?” he called, following her into the hall. “Hey, lady, come back, please!”
The fan pressed the elevator button and then, when she saw he was following, bolted into the open door to the stairwell. Which was how most people came and went anyway, since the World War II - vintage elevators rarely arrived in less than ten minutes.
“Jeez, Meg, I’m sorry,” he said, taking off his hat and wiping sweat from his forehead. I recognized the tall, gangly figure now. Frankie, one of the junior programmers. I was still struggling to attach names to faces for most of the thirty or so programmers and graphic artists on staff. Frankie I’d tagged the first day as “the eager one,” because he was always underfoot, trying to help with anything anyone was doing. Anything, that is, except the apparently boring programming chores that actually constituted his job.
“Don’t worry about it, Frankie,” I said. “It was that rabid fan again.”
“The one who tried to get herself delivered in a Gateway box?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “So why are you dressed up like Caerphilly’s finest?”
“The art department is going to use me as a model for some new characters,” Frankie said. “What do you think?”
He twirled for me to admire his outfit.
“I’m amazed,” I said. I was, actually. The uniform so emphasized Frankie’s gangliness that he looked remarkably like a stork. And his habit of balancing on one leg and wrapping the other around it only enhanced the resemblance.
I must have kept a straight face, though. Frankie beamed with delight.
“Just make sure you’re leading the pack if I have to push the panic button,” I said.
“Panic button?” he said, blinking vacantly.
“We went through this last week,” I said. “This button under the desk that the receptionist can push discreetly if he or she feels threatened, remember? And it rings the bell back in the offices - “
“And we all run out to the reception area and rescue the receptionist from the intruder.”
“Very good.”
“Unless you’re filling in for the receptionist, in which case we’d probably need to rescue the intruder,” Frankie said, accompanying his words with a flailing gesture that was probably supposed to be some kind of karate move. Either that, or he was swatting gnats.
“Yes,” I said, gritting my teeth. “That button.”
“Right,” Frankie said. “No problem. I’d better go; the art guys are waiting.”
A model? I mused, as Frankie stalked off. True, Lawyers from Hell was populated with hundreds of characters - defendants, jurors, judges, bailiffs, arresting officers, witnesses, reporters, and, of course, lawyers. But they were represented on screen by cartoon characters, maybe an inch tall at the most. And while the graphic artists had done a wonderful job of giving them distinctive personalities, I had a hard time imagining the process required models.
Maybe it was just a practical joke to get Frankie to show up at the office in a police uniform, I thought, as I gave Katy a doggie treat and thumped her gently on the head with my bandage. That sounded more likely, here at Mutant Wizards.
I glanced up to see what Liz, Mutant Wizards’ real live lawyer, thought of Frankie’s outfit. Way up, since that’s where she was at the moment. The office was mostly a jungle of cubes with five-foot partitions. Even the few enclosed rooms - the reception area, the executives’ offices, the lunchroom, and the central library - generally had partitions instead of real walls. Sturdier partitions that were eight feet high instead of five, but partitions, just the same. The only permanent rooms in the whole place were the computer lab, which had floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and the bathrooms, which had old-fashioned solid walls, thank goodness. And die therapists’ offices, of course, which were off on a small side corridor that would have given them a lot more privacy if it hadn’t led to the bathrooms.
On the plus side, the minimal number of real walls meant that every part of the office got a lot of natural light, which hot only cut the electric bill but also helped morale - the long hours the staff worked would otherwise have kept many of them from seeing sunlight for days on end. On the minus side, it made for a pretty noisy environment, and anyone who wanted to chat privately with one of his creditors or make an appointment with her gynecologist usually ended up dragging a cell phone into the John.